Sophie Wardle

 So, I was reading about Mondrian on the train journey down here. How his life’s work was the distillation of the nature he saw around him into a flattened, rigorous, restrained, taut analysis – the grids we are so familiar with. Mondrian plays on my mind quite a lot. The ubiquity of his work : fridge magnets, posters, t shirts, mugs belies the focus that he applied to his work. I love his single mindedness. I would love to be so laser like – perhaps one day I will be, but not now. And that’s ok. 

In the meantime, here is my little homage. I started with a sketch of the hillside in Brixham, all the houses, roofs, windows. I tried to simplify it while keeping true to the view. I used this sketch as the prep for an acrylic sketch, focussing on the blocks in the scene. I took some photos of lines and angles I saw in the scenery. Then I exorcised diagonals from the equation, just as Mondrian did. The two media were then merged using Adobe Mix and edited digitally. Final cropping done, here’s the finished piece, ready for printing. 

A shadow of the master but I enjoyed trying a little of his technique. You like?